I recently joined a tech company purportedly with a mission I believed in. Before joining I had some hesitance about how their product achieved that mission, but I liked most the people I interviewed with and the offer was good. Turns out despite being profitable it’s a dumpster fire of a company led by a terrible person who is actively hostile towards my coworkers and our customers. So, I’ve been looking for a new role to get out ASAP.

Some challenging factors: the market is tough right now and I don’t get as many interviews as I feel I should, SWE interviews remain extremely stupid, and occasionally my brain just shuts off during interviews despite practicing it a million times. So getting an offer isn’t a breeze.

The question I’m wrestling with is should I join another company whose product I’m very skeptical of? It has market traction and many of you may have heard of it, but it’s not very compelling and it’s in the blighted world of social media (which I largely don’t use). My fear is that a bad product may necessarily mean a bad company. The confusion for me is that every single person I’ve interviewed has been incredibly down to earth and genuinely fun to talk to. They all claim to respect work-life balance (it’s remote too) and it doesn’t seem like lip service; they pay very well too. The opportunity to learn skills I can’t learn in many jobs seems compelling.

The role itself is the title I want, but the focus I’m not wild about. It’s a bit more user growth focused than I’d typically want. The problem is my current job is wrecking my mental health and I’m desperate to get out.

I’m interviewing with two other companies with better missions I’d much prefer to work for but both are dragging their feet and lower pay; one pays pretty terrible. I’m rapidly approaching a point where I will likely have a single offer in hand with no guarantee that others will manifest.

Any thoughts or guidance on how to navigate this? I want to approach this as “a job is just a job” and clock in and clock out, but I’ve seen at my current role that is not possible as I carry the stress and despair into my free time. I desperately don’t want to join another toxic company, but I don’t want to use that as an excuse to stunt my career growth either.

I know if I posted that on Reddit, all the top answers would be something like "Money"or "It lets me survive" but I'm looking for something deeper than that.

I'm a teacher and school just started where I lived and I realize how much freedom the job gives me. I can considerably modify how my day will go as long as the students learn the curriculum. I love that freedom.

I also love the human nature of it. I get to know and see 100 kids develop every year, plus, I teach juniors and I've had a lot of my last year students stop by me to say hello and talk about their summer or their current teachers. It's fun having all these random positive conversations every day.

I get to learn a lot about people and about me. I love that growth.

What about you?

A long, complicated story, summarized: (apart from Tildes, on which I lurk) I swore off all social media years ago. Then my job required that I have an account on LinkedIn. I reconsidered, and attempted to make the least disclosive account possible in an effort to protect my privacy. Things aren't going well. Despite logging in with the correct credentials, on the same device, using the same browser; and with access to my signup email, and access to the phone I used to enroll, LinkedIn has flagged my account the second time I tried using it and now requires me to upload images of myself and my government ID to regain access to their cesspool. Are you familiar with their protocols and can share insights, so that if I start again I don't face the same problem?

I have read what LinkedIn says and I have read discussions on Reddit on the topic. LinkedIn says you can opt to "use your work email" or mail them an affidavit. These options were not given to me. Everyone else I have seen reporting facing this seems to have triggered the system by losing their login credentials or moving countries; what brought this upon me and can I avoid it?

1. Is it that I use a VPN, and it may have routed through a different IP address on the second login?
2. I use an email alias. Is LinkedIn purging accounts with email domains that offer aliases?
3. Is it a result of clearing cookies?
4. Is it easier to maintain a Google account (!) which LinkedIn allows as login without this ID thing coming up?

Please be gentle with your advice as I am kind of panicking.

I keep getting messages in my email inbox or LinkedIn like:

> Hi, 
> I’m seeking a genuine partnership where only a USA software engineer can truly collaborate with me. 
> I value transparency and real results. 
> Things to do are very simple and I guarantee 3K~10K/month income for you.
> I’m ready to prove my credibility and discuss a win-win business. 
> Thank you!

Hello $their_name,

Why do you need a USA engineer and what do I need to do?

- $my_name

> Thanks for reaching me out.
> 
> I run a software development team with five talented developers who specialize in frontend, backend, full stack, AI/ML and blockchain technologies. Although we have a strong team, we are struggling to find enough jobs right now. As you may know, the economy in Europe is tough and low salary as well, so we are trying to find more opportunities in the US and Canada. However, this is challenging for us because of time zone differences, language barriers, and many US clients preferring to hire local people like you.
> 
> To solve these issues, I'm actively looking for someone who can help us in getting more jobs in the US. Since you are a US citizen, you can create accounts on job platforms like Indeed, Dice, Upwork and Wellfound. I think you may have already heard about Upwork. It's a world famous freelancing platform. After setting up your accounts, if you allow me to use them, I will apply for jobs by myself. When I receive interview requests from clients, I will notify you so you can attend the meetings. During the interviews, I will support you by quickly sending you the right answers to any technical questions that come up.
> 
> Once we secure a job, our team will handle all the development work, including any test projects. We will share the profits from the work we do, with a split of 30% for you and 70% for our team.
> In short, your role would be to connect with clients and help us secure jobs, while our team takes care of the technical work. This is a great opportunity for collaboration and growth.
> 
> And there is one thing I need to tell you about using your account. Several platforms have very strict policies with ip addresses. If i use your account on my own machine, your account will be risky because ip addresses are different. And also they detect VPN, VPS, and some cloud services as well. To address this, we need to use your spare laptop. I will use your account on your spare one using a remote desktop application like Anydesk. Anydesk is a secure and safe remote desktop application.

> Greeting,
> 
> I hope this message finds you well. My name is Cuong, and I came across your information on your website ( WE need it ). I am excited to share that I have a potential long-term collaboration opportunity that I believe could be mutually beneficial.
> 
> We’re a fast-growing IT consulting company based in Malaysia, with a talented team experienced in web2, web3, mobile development, and AI. As we expand into the U.S. market, we’re actively seeking a reliable business partner—someone like you—to grow together.
> 
> Here’s how we can support you:
> - Proactively apply and schedule interviews on job platforms on your behalf
> - Optimize and refine your resume and LinkedIn profile to stand out
> - Provide technical guidance to help you succeed in interviews
> - Take care of the actual development work once new projects are secured
> 
> If this sounds interesting to you, feel free to reach out. We’d love to hear your thoughts and explore how we can collaborate!
> 
> Looking forward to connecting with you.
> 
> Best Regards
> Cuong

Some of these messages are even from people who are well-connected to former bosses and managers and other talented people that I personally know. They aren't coming out of my spam folder.

I know I'm not special in this. I'm not the only one. They are throwing spaghetti on the wall until the meatballs stick, etc.

But I thought... what if I could use this to my advantage? I would still need to do the interviews but they could do the legwork applying for jobs and reaching out to companies, connections that they already have, and then when they deliver the job contract I cut off contact with these nebulous associates? And I join the company like normal.

Thoughts?

I see that in the headline from time to time. Not really sure how prevalent it is and it's pretty disappointing news.

but I also can't help but think:

1. the news articles are probably overblowing it and it's not probably not as prevalent as it's being portrayed
2. that any tech company doing that is shooting themselves in the foot. in total, I was an intern at various companies for a little under 3 years. I don't doubt that the work I did for the majority of the my co-ops were all things that could have been done by a chatBot. writing unit tests and small scripts and etc. but they were invaluable to me (1) understanding what is expected of me in a professional environment and (2) gave me a basic idea of how to code in a professional environment (2) gave me alot of perspective on what technologies and tools I should spend spare time learning cause my university very much focused on dinosaur-era languages, for the classes that did teach any coding related skills. same for the friends I went to uni with. So all I think is maybe in the short term, they are saving money on not hiring interns/co-ops/junior devs to do work that can be done by a bot but I feel like in the long terms that will reduce the number of intermediate/senior devs on the market which means they'll be in higher demand and cost more money.

Sorry if this isn't the best place to ask. IT and cybersecurity-focused communities over on Reddit aren't exactly the most welcoming places for such questions, and reading the r/ITCareerQuestions wiki has made me seriously question if I'm being sold false promises of working in a sector that actually has a low demand for workers. Then again, that wiki page seems more geared towards the US job market.

Two weeks ago, I responded to an Instagram ad advertising cybersecurity courses, because the job market is horrible here in the UK right now, and after some setbacks with my ACCA studies, I am seriously considering just giving up on trying to get into chartered accountancy because that path is closing many more doors for me. A course advisor rang me asking about the reasons I showed interest in the ad, then we had a long discussion about any questions I had, what the sector is apparently like, etc.

Some of the claims seem too good to be true, i.e. that it's an industry where you can afford to be picky, jobs outnumber people by almost 3 to 1, most jobs are remote, the provider boasts a 90%+ employment rate, I don't need programming experience, the most complex thing I'd be doing is running command prompt/powershell commands and scripts.

The firm itself seems legitimate. They offer CompTIA, Microsoft, Cisco, AWS and EC-Council certifications, have good review scores on Trustpilot, are a registered training provider and limited company in the UK, and are supposedly an assured service provider with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC.) The courses they mentioned to me in their syllabus supposedly come to £4k and would take about six months.

1. Am I right to be wary about what this training provider are offering?
2. Do you require extensive programming knowledge or a computer science background to work in cybersecurity in any capacity? A friend with an IT background has told me that Python is useful in his field.
3. Is the reality of IT and cybersecurity jobs in the UK (or in the West) far different from what has been painted to me?

Well, I have a lot of stuff going on.

In May, I graduated with my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. That was good, and I was glad to do so. After that I took a short well deserved break. It feels so good not to have to go to class and listen to a lecture from a lecturer who doesn't want to be there.

Now that I have my degree, I need to find a job that uses that degree. (or any thing remotely related) That may sound simple enough, but it is tough.

I don't know what I want to do with my degree. That's hard for me to say, but it's true. Like I have always been looked at as someone who was "smart" and "had it together" or "had a straight path". Very much not. Anyway, I don't know what all that degree qualifies me for. I know it opens me up to the development field. I did a lot of programming through college and between, but it's not something I really enjoy. I am not particularly bad at it. It just not something I really want to be doing 100% of the time all the time. Then there is the IT field. I am not so sure where I really would like to go in IT though. Support is not really an ideal place for me. I am terrified of the idea of having to talk on a phone. I can do in person support better. Then there is infrastructure. I am kinda interested in infrastructure, but it is huge. I don't even know what to look for in that area. I am just a kid with a CS degree, I don't have this figured out.

I live in the middle of nowhere. or at least it feels like it (rural central Arkansas) You have to really look at the next city over for anything. Even then most things I see are out of the capital. There is nothing bad about any of this. I got my degree in the next city over, drove there every day. The capital is only 40 - 50 minutes away.

It feels like everyone wants to see experience. Either directly or indirectly. This is hard for me. I don't have any professional experience at all. I have some personal projects I have worked on. I do have those listed in my resume. I don't feel that helps that much. I spent my time getting that degree, not working.

Family is troublesome. In many many ways. They are always like "you need to get a job", "have you found anything yet", "are you filling out a job application". Like please leave me alone about this. I am doing what I am doing. You don't have to know every single thing about me. I am me, not you. Troublesome and frustrating. Another thing is they are stuck in the past. Two of them are going deaf. One of them is nuts, and does not know how to respect privacy at all. Its a lot. It leaves me with an annoying bootstrapping problem I have to solve. I still live with my parents, with my grandparents next house over. I have to get a place that is away from family. To do that I need to get a job. To really look hard, and even want to do so and not just do some and get frustrated, I need to get away from family. There are solutions. Just go elsewhere and look for stuff. Not easy when they always want to know where you are all the damn time. Always wanting you to keep them updated and know where you are. I have a few tricks, location services is very inaccurate when wifi is turned off. I also can just say "I am going somewhere", and when they ask more I just say "I am 23 blooming years old". Not the kind of trouble I want to go through all time. Family is frustrating. Even more so, when you are an introvert and just want to be alone for a while. When you get into actually doing something, they come to you to ask about something. "do you know where this [item] is?", "I need you to do this [task]". It's like they can sense when you are actually focus or are just vibing or actually happy. They go on and complain that you snap at them. When they were the ones that were interrupting a rare moment of focus, or appear out of nowhere. Annoying to say the least. Never the one to actually win. By default, "I am older and know more then you", "I gave birth to you". Saying I am in trouble when I do nothing wrong. Like when I got in trouble for going to my grandparents house early in the morning during the summer. Lost all trust that summer. Or when I shared some cinnamon rolls that I bought with my grandparents. Got into trouble for not bringing my parents any. It was just a kind gesture and I am made to feel like I don't care about anybody over it. Troublesome and difficult.

If you just read all that, thanks. I promise I am decently put together in real life. That is rawer then I would usually like to put out.

So far I still don't have a good title for this post so I guess I'll just add some more.
I have not found anything yet. I have not applied to many places yet. I did apply to a regional ISP and got an interview, but was rejected for lack of work history to show I can deal with phone support, and for potential lack of clarity. I applied to a local audio cable manufacturer, but was caught by ats or lack of checking. Actually applied to their website for that one. I have asked some of the local Facebook groups "who was hiring locally in CS / IT fields". I got a few responses from it. A pyramid scheme. Someone who would look at their employer. They didn't have anything open, but at least they have my information now. Someone who is likely looking more so for a general laborer then an IT person. I still kinda want to hear them out, but they still haven't said anything else to me. I have brushed up my LinkedIn. I have also signed up for more accounts then I would have liked. I have talked with a local employment agency, but I don't think they will find anything like what I am looking for.

Well, its a process, and I am just at the beginning. If you do have any advice for my job search I would be glad to read it.

TLDR: Dotz graduated and is looking for a job, then rants about family.

I had heard about GLG a while ago and I was just approached by someone from GLG for a project. Does anyone have experience working with them specifically? I have never done any paid consulting gigs and I want to make sure I understand what I'm getting into.

Thanks!

As some of you on here may know, I was made redundant from my Assistant Commercial Reporting Analyst job three months ago and have been struggling to find permanent work since. Many of my interactions with recruiters and hiring managers have been negative and have felt like they were wasting my time, but one particular (ongoing) experience has taken the cake.

In mid-April, I applied for an Assistant Client Accountant position through LinkedIn. The role was with a large property management and building consultancy firm (offices based in the UK & France), who have some pretty big-name clients. Fully office-based, advertised pay between £25k - £29k (already similar payscales to what credit control and purchase ledger roles near me are offering), and the position ideally asked for fully AAT qualified or ACCA part-qualified candidates (I have full AAT membership, am 3 exams into my ACCA, and have over 6 years experience in previous accounting and financial reporting roles.)

Nine weeks later, I am still going through this application process which has been nothing short of a shitshow:

• It has taken multiple weeks to schedule and conduct interviews for each stage, due to unanswered emails and heavily delayed responses from both the Finance and HR teams. I had emailed on nine separate occasions to schedule the the second and third stage interviews I was invited to, and only twice did I get replies. At first I was told it was due to staff sickness, but then the trend of replying in business weeks just kept going on, even after the third-stage (which I'll get to.)

• The first stage interview was a 15 - 30 minute phone interview going through my CV and salary expectations. Stages 2 and 3 involved a series of hour-long competency based interviews, one conducted via Teams and the other in-person with the Head of Finance. This is already a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through for an office-based role with this salary level.

• During the third-stage interview (3rd June) I was asked a lot of supervisory/leadership questions which I honestly didn't expect. It made me question whether I was being interviewed for the correct role, so I checked the job description of what I applied for. Only 4 of the 590 words contained within the job advert even alluded to me leading junior colleagues - so maybe it was easily missed?

• On the 5th June (two days after my third-stage interview), I received an email from HR thanking me for accepting the Client Accountant position and asking me to confirm RTW (right-to-work) details. The thing is... I never received an offer letter, and after immediately chasing this up I found out the email was sent to me by mistake. This HR rep apologized and said they'd chase feedback. I emailed twice to chase this feedback and promised it would be coming.

• Today when I emailed again to chase feedback, the HR advisor responded to raise concerns about the salary expectations I communicated in the first stage, insisted the role actually paid £26k at most and asked me to confirm a salary within their range. This is false (I know, I actually double-checked the job ad and even did a screen recording on my mobile of me going into the LinkedIn app and opening the job posting) and I get the impression that they're now trying to lowball me. I emailed again asking for clarification where I linked the job ads and I get the feeling they confused the salary bands with a Purchase Ledger role I applied for several months prior but was not considered for.

I will find out Monday (after nearly three weeks) if I was successful in my application, but even if they offer me the job at a reduced salary rather than outright reject me, I am already seeing a shitload of red flags.

At this point I've had enough. Normally I'd cut my ties and move on but with how desperate I've been for work and how much I feel like this company has taken me for a ride, I feel the need to take things further. Not sure whether I should (or even could) formally raise a complaint, drop some negative feedback on their Glassdoor page, or go public (with receipts) and openly name & shame the company on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. The latter options feel like I'd be going nucelar and as cathartic as it would be, I'm worried it would be seen as unprofessional and hurt my future job prospects.

What would be the best way to proceed?

Hello tilderinos! I'm currently on the hunt for a new job, and it's been a very long time since I've had to do any kind of real interviewing to compete for a position. I'm looking for some general tips and, if anyone is experienced in the field of education, tips specific to teacher interviews.

My strengths in interviews are that I'm generally a confident speaker, I know my field well, keep pace with recent developments, and have an enormous amount of experience to draw from.

My weaknesses are that I tend to ramble (adhd!), I lose track of multi part questions (adhd strikes again!), and I'm terrible at quickly recalling specific examples from my mountain of experience. I also feel that, especially when interviewing for positions a bit outside my experience (Eg a 2nd grade teaching position) I come across as naive at best and ignorant at worst.

I also generally have a hard time selling myself with words. I'm very much a man of action, and would love to demonstrate my skill firsthand, but that isn't terribly easy to do in an interview setting.

I hope this topic isn't too selfish of me and I appreciate any feedback I get! Thank you all.

I did a masters in data analytics, and then the niche I fell into in the working world was building dashboards, reports and spreadsheets of financial data for non-technical bureaucrats. Instead of ensuring data quality by technical means, my current company often just has me manually reviewing and checking financial data. This is pretty frustrating to me because I have no education in finance, and the things I miss or get wrong are so second nature to my boss that he doesn't even see them as something I should have been trained on. The only technologies I use are SQL server and excel. Any proactive steps I've made to automate processes has been discouraged as not worth the time.

I'm aware that most people spend years on tedious stuff before ever getting to work with more engaging technology, but honestly I'm starting to wonder if they've forgotten I'm not a finance guy. I want to move up in my career especially to escape my current role, but I'm feeling completely lost as to how. There's no obvious role in my company that could be a 'next rung of the ladder' to advance into, so there's nobody I can emulate to help chart a course. My boss had an unconventional path to his current role, and isn't really into manager stuff like career mentoring, so he's no help in that regard.

To anyone with experience in data science, what is the advancement supposed to look like? What are the key skills I should be developing? Am I being too averse to learning the subject matter of the data I'm working on? Any insight is appreciated!

I was having a recent conversation with my friends about PTO and who thought they had too much or too little.
The results were interesting, so I thought I'd ask Tildes.

• Are you happy with the amount of PTO you get? Do you wish you had more or do you struggle to spend them?
• US and European PTO is very different, how do you feel about the other side of the pond?
• Do you like the format you get given PTO? Or is there a better way you'd prefer?

Let me know!

Edit: Thanks everyone for responding! So many interesting thoughts and different policies, it's really hard to reply to any specifically lol. I've read them all though!!

I'm currently in the process of job shopping and, while it feels like all my friends are happy to tell me why I shouldn't work where they do, I do enjoy hearing from people that are satisfied with their line of work.

I personally like that my current work gives me free reign of the warehouse we operate in, if we met our metrics we could hold a game of poker in the back without too much fuss. What are some qualities in your work that make you a happier employee?

I don't really have any cool articles about de Laroche besides the Wikipedia page on her, but it is quite good and a shortish read, so very worthwhile. There is also this short article from the University of Houston, complete with a 3-minute audio version.

The week of 8 March is also International Women of Aviation Week, celebrating all the female aviators (people are getting away from using gender-specific words like aviatrix that weren't necessary in English anyway), including Jacqueline Cochran, the wartime head of Women Airforce Service Pilots in the U.S. and who would go on to be the first woman to break the sound barrier; Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman, the first African-American and Native American woman aviator and presumably the first licensed female pilot of mixed race to participate in air races and barnstorming stunt shows across the U.S. and Europe; Leah Hing, the first Chinese-American female pilot and who started her own flight school after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931; among many other women past and present who are earning their pilot's license.

I am trying to figure out and process my aversion to pursuing a career change.

What I have surmised is that I come to the conclusion, "well, in your past, most of the jobs you have studied or trained for, were not, in fact, what you thought they would be like in practice, so how do you know this is not the case with your new interest in career?"

What I'm looking for is people to challenge or confirm my assumptions: Example: "No, actually, your perception is distorted, most jobs are what people expect them to be."

I'm also looking for, validation or commiseration, "yeah, I feel that way too, it sucks" and am open to some problem solving, "I was once in your position and I did X,Y,Z and here were my results, YMMV"

Thank you for reading!

Posting for a friend

My company just acquired another company, and there is restructuring. A good work friend was let go today with no warning. She had been talking about the upcoming office gathering next month, and in the afternoon I got the notice to cut off her security access. I haven't spoken to her yet, her phone has been turned off. I'm still in the office processing this....this....sudden and unacceptable throwing away of a human being. I don't care what they say about how this is necessary for success and how the rest of us are safe and whatever. It doesn't make me feel better even if they tell me she'd been failing PIP or whatever (not what they said but just an example). How are we supposed to live in a society where money absolutely rules everything, where we must pay crazy amounts of money to live close to work, often making 25-30+ year mortgage commitments, when the company has no such commitments to us?

How do you cope with job security?

I have a lot of angry words and cynicism but that's probably not helpful for my friend right now.

I posted recently about needing a better job—well, if one has an interview for a better job (a much better job, hopefully), one needs to look the part. In the greater ATL area, two questions:

• I've gotten a variety of haircuts, from barbershops to salon-type places to Great Clips to at home with a Wahl, but they've topped out around 20 bucks. How do I find a really good haircut/face clean-up (brows etc) place? I don't want to just waltz in somewhere & end up looking ridiculous, but I don't even know where to start. It doesn't help that I have a kind of "weird" type of hair, where it's curly and kind of wiry, ethnically mediterranean/middle eastern, so if I get a regular clippers haircut it usually ends up looking chopped off.

• I also need a good suit, in toto; I have dress clothes but def. don't want to blow this one. National finance, I'm seeing business casual so suit/tie/shirt/shoes, nice enough to be unnoticeable is my goal. I have no idea how much a suit at that point would cost, but other than going to Brooks Brothers or Joseph A Banks I have no idea what the best approach would be (are those even in the same range lol)

Thanks again you all

Edit: i am a dude, sry

So I've hit on this a bit before here, but it's been a while—I stopped looking for jobs last summer & spent the rest of 2024 getting some things sorted in my own head about what I actually wanted to be doing, what I valued, and why I wanted to change anything in the first place. I love my job, not just because it's remote but honestly mostly because it's remote, but it does not pay enough & may not for a long time, so I have sort of collected together online weekend/evening/contractor part-time gigs on top, which altogether come out to around 90k. After all my soul-searching (& getting on the millenial ADHD meds train, whew), I'd reeeeally love to focus all of that into one job instead, as the downfall of the gig economy approach is not just the time investment required, it's that there's no opportunity for advancement—if I could keep one or two side hustles going, great, but that way I'd be free to let them go as needed as well, which would be a huge relief.

So that's the source for my very specific number; I would of course take more money lol.

I have experience in: adult training/instruction, CRM management, writing/editing, process analysis/efficiency/optimization, video/content creation (doesn't really fit with the rest but my resume is kind of nuts unfortunately)

I am really good at: soft skills/written & verbal communication, IT support, learning new things real quick but also very thoroughly & being able to teach them to others, making things work better/faster

I have degrees in: library science/research, education (no comp sci : / feel like that was my big mistake career path-wise, I've tried some online options more recently & am currently making headway with claude as a coding partner lol).

The real sticking point is I am currently remote & would have to make way more than 90k to be willing to go back to an office every day. My current job was an out-of-left-field career move that I wouldn't have even guessed existed, so I am open to literally any suggestions.

I was contacted by a recruiter regarding a job in my field but they wanted someone with data analytics skills. I'm taking this as a sign that I should improve my skill set. Does anyone have advice for where or how to start with a very small budget?

Thanks for your help.